As you deplane at Fresno Yosemite International Airport you’re struck by Collins’ 70-foot-long panorama of the snow covered mountains in Yosemite National Park. Of “Welcome to Fresno,” 9,000 pixels high and over 30,000 long, he jokes: “They constructed this new terminal to house my mural.”

Steve Collins

Fresno Grizzlies baseball stadium

Steve Collins

City Hall

Steve Collins

A second mural by Collins at Fresno Yosemite International Airport, called “California’s New Frontier,” is a montage of Fresno landmarks. Measuring 9x50-feet, this mural is located at a baggage claim area. Going left to right, although not shown in its entirety, it features a fruit blossom, which leads to the Savemart Center, which is located on the grounds of Fresno State University. In the middle sits City Hall then the Fresno Grizzlies baseball stadium. Says Collins, “Each building, as well as the blossom, was shot separately multiple times and blended together in Adobe Photoshop CS2 on my Mac G4. In actuality, all these landmarks are miles apart from each other.”

Steve Collins

Steve Collins

The first thing you notice as you exit the plane at Fresno Yosemite International
Airport is a stunning 70-foot-long panorama of the snow-covered mountains in
Yosemite National Park. “Welcome to Fresno” was shot from Washburn
Point, by Steve Collins.

At the baggage claim area you see a nine-foot-tall, 50-foot-long mural of Yosemite
Valley, with El Capitan on the left and Half Dome in the middle.Collins shot
this from Inspiration Point. Across the mural are the words “Gateway to
the Park,” letting you know how close you are to one of America’s
most treasured National Parks.

Another Collins mural of the same size blends together numerous photos of Fresno
landmarks. Across it reads “California’s New Frontier.”

Steve’s been creating jumbo airport murals for some time now. As he explains, “I
first got the idea of doing large photos and murals out of necessity when Big
3D Worldwide owner Tom Seville wanted some very large images. So I devised
a technique and a shooting platform that would allow me to shoot several images
and piece them together.

“Image files have limitations as to how large thay can be printed so I
had to create larger images and bigger file sizes. some of the images are in
excess of 40,000 pixels, far larger than any camera available.”

Steve captured all the images for these murals with the Kodak Professional
DCS-760, which was built on a Nikon F5, with a Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 (for
City Hall), Nikkor 28-70mm f/2.8 (for Grizzlies stadium), 80-200mm f/2.8
(for Savemart Gateway and Welcome images).

Collins, a trained machinist, designed and built a perspective control device
for lining up his camera to take multiple images. It helps him blend the
images together with relative ease in Photoshop.

Building the Murals

“I wanted travelers coming to Fresno to see how close they are to Yosemite,” said
Steve. ‘Gateway to the Park’ is a reminder that Yosemite is just
an hour away. I approached the airport’s air service and marketing department
and showed them my work at the Boise Terminal. It didn’t take a degree
in marketing to sell them on the idea and the images.”

To create these huge high-quality images, Steve takes multiple photos then
spends hours putting them together to get a 9,000 x 30,000 pixel image from
a 2,000 x 3,000 pixel camera.

The montage of Fresno, called “California’s New Frontier”,
puts City Hall, Savemart Center, and Grizzlies Stadium together in one photo.
In actuality, the sites are miles apart. Steve hired his long-time friend Lisa
Walzem to do her magic on the city wrap with Photoshop.

“On the ‘Welcome to Fresno’ mural, I shot images and
viewed them on my laptop so I knew I had it. It was extremely difficult
to find a location because almost every spot that allowed viewing had trees blocking
that view.

“For the ‘Gateway to the Parks’ image, I created
a cropping guide on the computer and went out looking for the right spot.
“When I found it, I set up the camera and panned back and forth adjusting
for horizon. I made certain the tripod was perfectly level by placing a level
on top without a camera. I shot several images, like putting together a puzzle.

“All computer work was done on my 17” Mac PowerBook G4 and Adobe
Photoshop CS, using a Wacom tablet—the best thing since sliced bread.”

After capture, the image files were sent to a specialty lab in Alabama,
where they were printed on 3M pressure sensitive vinyl in 48”-wide overlapping
panels by the VuTek 2360SC Piezo Inkjet printer with a 3M inkset that used
the standard CMYK plus light cyan and magenta ink. A 3M matte overlaminate
was used for reducing specular highlights.